Page 75 of Hell In A Handbasket
“No shit.” She turns at Christabelle’s cry of pain, holding on and riding through another contraction. Then she steps in closer and takes more of her weight, lifting while Aubree does the same on her left.
Christabelle’s feet still touch the floor—barely—but they move us faster. Smoother. And fuck, but I don’t trust myself to carry her, in case my frenzied brain shuts down and shows me stars again.
“You were eight centimeters three or four contractions ago, Cannon. You’re playing with fire right now, and gravity isn’t doing you any favors.”
“Off the bus. Off the bus!” Cato herds them forward, rushing our snail’s pace into something else entirely. “Knees up, ladies. We are not having my niece or nephew on a fucking party bus.”
“Not apartybus,” Soph quips. “Cost a fortune, actually. So we’re probably going to need to discuss a cleaning bill for the amniotic fluid on the floor. And repairing the curtain you tore.”
“Shut up, Sophia!” Minka slams her hip against the wall, dragging Christabelle around to the door. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“It’s just that we paid a security deposit and promised to return the bus in the exact condition we took it in. If it’s busted up, they said they’ll consider this a sale, not hire, and I don’t actually have the parking space to keep this on a full-time basis.”
“You’re gonna die.” Archer holds Sophia’s shoulders and spins her away. “Jesus, I’ve never met someone so intent on flirting with death.”
“I’m here!” A dude slams a car door and sprints across the parking lot, sandy blonde hair and broad, muscular shoulders that don’t look doctorly at all. If I thought to breathe a little easier now that help has arrived, my chance is gone again in an instant, because he keeps on sprinting, straight past us and through the hospital doors.
Gone.
Like maybe he wasn’t talking to us at all.
“Down the steps,” Minka coaches. “You’re doing great, Debbie. You’re so close.”
“I’m back!” The dude rushes through the hospital doors with an empty wheelchair. Slamming his foot to the brakes and parking it just six feet from the bus doors, he swings a white coat on and accepts a pair of gloves from a nurse in blue scrubs.
“It’s coming.” Christabelle tears her hands from mine and clutches to the frame of the bus door, white-knuckling the steel and bearing down. “Oh God! The baby is coming!”
“Not yet! Not yet! Not yet!” The doctor fights with his gloves and looks up to find one, two, ten, fifteen sets of frenzied eyes. “Woah. There are a lot of you.”
“Baby’s coming!” Christabelle cries out. “Oh no!”
“Not yet!” Minka shoves me out of the way and tears Christabelle’s shorts down—one, two, ten sets of male eyes swinging away before they end up on my hit list—then she heaves. “Oh shit! Debbie, no!”
“Catch her!” Aubree remains stuck behind Christabelle, still on the bus. “Minka! Don’t miss.”
Minka drops to her knees and scoops her hands forward, wide-eyed and with her lips pressed firmly shut.
Christabelle screams, and Catoarrrghhhs! The doctor finishes with his gloves. And then…
Splat.
“Holy shit!” Minka catches my baby, fumbling the slippery little bundle in her hands. “Now you catch Debbie!”
“You weren’t supposed to push!” The doctor looks from me, to Christabelle, to Aubree, and then down to Minka and my baby.
My purple baby. Mynot cryingbaby.
“You pushed!”
“It’s not crying.” Christabelle’s knees give out, her weight falling into my arms, and her breath exploding in a cry of terror. “Minka! She’s not?—”
“Give her a sec.” Aubree crouches and watches between Christabelle’s legs as Minka turns my baby upside down. LiteralI-caught-a-fishenergy. She dangles my daughter—my God, I have a daughter—from her ankles and pats her back, and, finally doing his job, the doctor accepts a suction-thingy from a different nurse and slides it up the baby’s nose.
“Oh, she’s so pretty,” Aubree murmurs. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s not crying!” Christabelle whimpers. “Minka, she’s not?—”
“Her color’s coming back.” Minka brings the baby back around again, cradling her in her arms, careful not to tug on the cord still dangling from Christabelle.
